Persian garniture

This Persian style mantel garniture is composed of a clock and a pair of candelabrum with two lights made in silvered and gilt bronze and white marble.
The model was created by Adolphe Victor Geoffroy-Dechaume then by the sculptor Charles-François-Edouard Elmerich and executed by the bronze maker Auguste-Maximilien Delafontaine.

clock signed “Geoffroy Dechaume”
Maerial : gilt and silvered bronze
Provenance : Paris, circa 1852
clock dimensions : H : 45 cm / L : 31 cm / D : 21 cm
Candelabrum dimensions : H : 28 cm / L : 13 cm / D : 9 cm

The round dial of the clock, adorned with enamelled arab number, is flanked with two dragons of which the tails spread out above the piece in scrolls inhabited with fantastic birds and finished by a bull head. The diamond base, adorned with chimeras, lays, thank to four thin feet, on a white marble polylobed terrace with four openwork feet. The two candelabrum are nicely worked : the body of each element is chiseled and adorned with a decoration of scrolls.

marcmaison.com

Auguste-Maximilien Delafontaine (1813-1892), bronze maker who came after his father in 1840, very often asked Geoffroy-Dechaume from 1847. Together, they make in the Far-East taste boxes, vases, clocks and lights. The expenses of Geoffroy-Dechaume show that he gives, in 1851-1852, the drawing of a clock so called “Persian” to the bronze maker Delafontaine. The fabrication is givent to the sculptor Elmerich. This drawing is still conserved in the Geoffroy-Dechaume’s archives (today ibn the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine’s collection).

An old photograph of the Persian garniture made by Charles Marville teaches us that it included not only a clock and two candelabrum but also two cups.
Furthermore, an examplar of the clock would have been on the bronze maker Delfontaine display in the 1855 World’s Fair. He, rewarded with a 1st class medal, showed there candelabrum, cups, boxes, of which the model were due to Geoffroy-Dechaume.

Charles Marville, photograph of a Persian mantel garniture, 1851-1852
Geoffroy-Dechaume collection, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris

Victor Geoffroy-Dechaume, Projet de pendule
Fonds Geoffroy-Dechaume, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris

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